Coolest Awards Banquet. Ever.

A huge shout-out to Scott Rosberg from Great Resources for Coaches. I interviewed him back on WYC Podcast Episode 75, and he shared this awesome idea:

Don’t have a bunch of awards based on talent-level. (Offensive MVP, Defensive MVP, Most Goals, etc.)

Instead, base your awards on things 100% controllable by the players.

I know, doesn’t seem like rocket-science, but why did I never do this before?

We did it, and it was awesome. Here are the categories we came up with:

Positive Energy

Hardest Worker

Best Teammate

Field general (best communicator on the field)

Do the dirty work

Hardest working rookie

Leave the jersey in a better place

These were all voted on by the players.

Then we had 1 Coach’s Award, chosen by the coaches, utilizing the criteria above.

And we had 2 MVP awards, which were voted on by the players.

So we ended up with 10 awards for 33 players.

The one other thing we did was read all of the names who received votes for each category. That way kids(and their parents) could hear their name, even if they weren’t walking away with an award.

I left the players with a final challenge, specifically talking to everyone who didn’t win an award or hear their name called… Insert cliffhanger here… I’ll share the details of that in next week’s post.

2 thoughts on “Coolest Awards Banquet. Ever.”

Thanks for the shout-out, Craig! Glad you had such a great experience with your awards. I love that every kid on the team can win these awards, not just the most talented players. It rewards the things that we preach all season long – team-first attitude, effort, coachable, discipline, etc. I can’t tell you how many years I gave out an “MVP” trophy to kids who were physically skilled and talented, but not necessarily great teammates or workers. They just happened to be physically more gifted than their teammates. Yet, I had other kids who did everything the way we asked them to, were totally committed to our team and the standards of our team, and were everything that a coach wanted in a player, but they received nothing. I hated that! Also, to be clear for people, this is not an “Every kid gets a trophy” mentality. In fact, it is more of a “The right kids who are committed to doing the right things to make the team great get a trophy” mentality. Your award categories are inspiring and getting kids focused on being the best they can be for their team. Great job and keep up the great work!